This is a thread for discussion about your 2025 common beans.
We direct sow common beans when the soil is 70 degrees F (21 deg C), which isn’t until around June 1 here in Corbett, OR. You might get away with planting a bit earlier, but remember that beans don’t really like cold conditions and consider waiting for a warm spell.
Spacing recommendations vary for common beans, in my experience a spacing of 6 in. seems to work well, but you may choose to crowd plants if your goal is maximum diversity more than overall yield. Dry beans may benefit from relatively more space to ensure better air flow during drying, where fresh beans may tolerate more crowding, especially fresh eating pole types.
It’s best to stop watering when pods begin to dry down, which can be challenging in areas with fall rain. If needed, you can pull entire plants and finish drying indoors. You can pop dry beans out of their pods by hand as a fun activity, or pound in a pillowcase for medium scales, or drive over tarped beans on larger scales. Winnowing with a breeze or box fan can work well, screens can be helpful on larger scales.
Last year my community did some taste testing of maximum diversity dry beans, and we found that they were absolutely delicious, with varying but completely compatible texture. I think some people worry about varying cooking times for diverse dry beans, but we found that it’s not an issue with a simple pot of beans. Cook until the firmest beans are tender, and the smaller beans will begin to break down into a rich broth.
I planted half my beans very early March and the other half in the middle of March.
Temps have been 60°-80°F days and 50°-60°F nights. Lots of rain.
The first set are growing great with nice leaves and have already survived one hail storm. The second set are just starting to push up out of the ground.
I won’t be putting in my first beans until May-ish here, depending on spring storms. My pack of Earliest Dry Beans will be mixed up with a wide variety of other dry bush beans and planted in three lots, each two weeks apart.
This summer I am trialing over a dozen different pole varieties from the USDA’s GRIN seed bank, all selected for affinity to shade and interplanting with corn. I plan on taking the best performing half and manually crossing to make a hybrid swarm of pole beans to select for polyculture. If its a good year I’ll be sending a whole lot of beans in next autumn. Some of them are old heirlooms from the south, or feral volunteers found in Mexican corn fields, or vigorous landraces from Argentina.
But thats not including my other pole bean landrace and my bush beans either. Oh yeah and my lima bean x ph. Polystachios hybrid project. This is my biggest year yet with phaseolus.
Not yet, but I have the original Polystachios strain from oikos that Ken used to create his perrenial lima hybrids. I also have 3 other strains from the usda I’ll be attempting some manual crosses with to add some diversity and observe. I’m going to contact some of the farmers trialing and generating seed for my nitrogen fixing corn landrace to guage interest in growouts of the Polystachios x Lunatus crosses next summer.
The biggest challenge for myself is trying to network these projects with a variety of growers for seed generation as I’m still using just a ⅛ acre. I’m moving to my 8 acre property on the far side of the country in 2 years so I’m utilizing as many locations as possible for this perrenializing project
This is my biggest year yet with phaseolus.